American Horror Story: Cult trailer reveals political underpinnings

Yet another season of American Horror Story is almost upon us, and it comes bearing the moniker Cult. FX Networks has published the full teaser trailer following some smaller teasers, and in it we see a lot of things hitting typical phobia checkmarks: clowns, bugs, trypophobia, caskets, hemophobia and Donald Trump. We’ve got the trailer, but take note: it’s not for the squeamish, and it is definitely not safe for work.

American Horror Story, despite some fair criticisms and more than a few storyline fumbles, has managed to persist through a handful of seasons to get yet another year on FX. The show centers around the horror genre, as the name suggests, and though the cast remains mostly unchanged throughout each season, the storyline is different each time.

Past storylines have included a freak show, a haunted house, an asylum, a witch coven, and a bizarro hotel. This time around, the show will center around the storyline “Cults,” though we’ll have to wait and see exactly what that’ll entail. The trailer, above, is all over place; we see a lot of blood, people donning masks of Trump and Clinton, clowns both in a fairground and in a graveyard, and more.

This will be the seventh season of American Horror Story, and the trailer reveals that Billie Lourd, daughter of the late Carrier Fisher, is joining the cast. Lourd has previous television horror show experience via her role in the now-cancelled series Scream Queens.

While the masks reveal a political element to the storyline, it is unclear to what extent politics may play a role in the show. The politicians appear only briefly as rubber masks for scenarios that look decidedly apolitical, and so it is possible it was just a fun hook FX decided to toss into the mix. The only clue we’ve gotten from officials at this point is that ‘paranoia’ will play a role.